The course website and blog for the Fall 2016 instance of Penn State's SC200 course

Is water-repellent clothing the clothing of the future?

There has been a lot of talk about nano tech clothing recently, and I wanted to learn more about it. Essentially, a Swiss chemist designed a shirt made of polyester fibers, but coated it in silicone filaments. So, when water hits the fabric, it will just stay in a bead-like form and roll off the shirt, keeping it dry. This could change the way a lot of clothing manufacturing make their clothes. For instance, nike and Adidas will most likely be furthering this research because they know a lot of their consumers want waterproof things. Another thought I had was that high end suit companies will start to look into this as well. This will keep the suit nice and dry whenever it starts to rain.

Now, I couldn’t find anything on the problem I’ve been thinking about and that is, how do you wash it?” No where does it say how to wash these new kinds of new clothes. They say they are “self- cleaning”, but I don’t believe that. If someone is going to wear this type of material then they are eventually going to sweat. All that odor isn’t going to just roll right off the material like water can. I still think that there need to be further research don’t on this potential product until they can find some way to wash the clothes.